Tadd
by MarisolM
Summary: This is a personal fanmail story about SYTYCD season 8 dancer, Tadd.  It may not ever happen, but if we ever did meet at a certain point, I would want it to go something like this...


He'd passed her with only a slight shoulder bump as he pushed his way into the bar. He didn't even register how small she was, at first. She was a pixie, like just that small shove could've thrown her off-course into a wall. It almost did.

"Oh shi—sorry," he heard himself say automatically, instantly. It wasn't like it could be avoided, anyway, with the amount of people packed inside the bar.

But it wasn't until he noticed the three glasses of beer carried delicately in her frame when he actually felt like a jerk. He even paused, wondering if she was going to make some remark while they both had to face the tight crowded space between them.

She didn't say a word.

Instead, the girl kept the drinks from spilling in her grasp. She looked up at him and gave a small, reassuring grin to say that no harm was done.

It happened so quickly, the boy wondered if he had actually just imagined it, like a personal atonement to his awful pushing through the crowd. He even searched for her eyes, then, as they both started to distance themselves from the flowing current of people.

When the girl finally complied to meet this boy's eyes, it caught them both by surprise… the fact that they shared the same color: a mysterious deep brown that almost wanted to be black. Static music and chatter of all the strangers around them in the pub seemed to become less intimidating, just because of this small bit of discovery. It didn't seem like anything important, or extraordinary, but nevertheless the girl's grin became a smile.

And the boy couldn't help but wonder if this smile was meant for everyone, or a select few.

Time seemed to catch up with her at that moment, letting the flowing crowd keep her moving a certain direction in the bar with the drinks in her hand.

The girl's mind was such a maelstrom, she couldn't feel her hands shaking from both excitement and embarrassment over what had just happened.

Yes, she knew he was on tour… and yes, of course she knew that he would be visiting her city that particular week. But it was a big city. At best, she would've been more likely to read about him in the city paper than to actually meet the boy face-to-face, faux hawk and all.

And now, the girl was mentally cursing herself to why she had been too nervous to say even "hello."

But _was_ it really him? It couldn't have. He had plenty of other bars to go to in city. Nicer ones. Ones that would be less crowded and probably offer him complementary appetizers and an open tab. Why would he be at this secondary-hand pub in the middle of college town?

By the time she had made it to her friends' table at the far end of the bar, she concluded that this must have been a look-a-like.

The boy, however, felt like he'd met this girl before somewhere in a previous passing. Even after she had disappeared into the crowd, he couldn't help but think about those brown eyes.

That short, almost pixie-like hair.

That expressive little smile that brought dimples to her face.

"Hey! We're over here!"

Immediately, Sasha's voice pierced through noisy crowd. It was Marko's signature whistle that finally turned the boy's eyes to that particular direction of the bar, reminding him why exactly he was there.

His friends were both waving from their little booth has he made his way, and he prayed to the man upstairs that his face wasn't blushing as much as he felt it.

"Yo," was his cool greeting to them, "Sorry I'm late. Mel wanted to rehearse our lifts a bit more for tomorrow."

He could see Marko making a bit of a shy grin at the mention of his former partner, just as quickly dismissing it as Sasha looked his way, too.

"No sweat, we just got here," Sasha exclaimed, handing her drink over to the newcomer for a sip. "This place is hella' crowded for a Thursday, though. Jeez…"

"Mitchell said it was good for burgers," Marko skimmed through the open menu as he spoke. "You gonna eat?"

But the other boy didn't hear him; he had just been overlooking the crowd blankly with his eyes, as if trying to remember something. Someone.

"Hey man, you okay?" Sasha snapped a finger after a few moments, then tried to locate whatever was getting her friend's attention.

He blinked, then, wincing back to his friends in the table. "Yeah! Yeah… I just… I almost made this girl spill her drinks."

It took a little time, but Sasha's eyes narrowed at him with an odd 'are you kidding me?' look. Marko, on the other hand, was beaming like a little boy.

"Oh my god," Marko laughed, "you're so smitten!"

The boy's eyes just wandered to the table, "no I'm serious! It was just a… I feel really bad."

He glanced over to Sasha's frozen and questioning expression.

"What?" was all he could say to her.

Sasha just raised a brow.

The supposedly-smitten boy just held his breath, his cool, and finally figured out what to do.

"I'm gonna go look for her and just apologize. Otherwise she'll be—it'll be on my mind all night."

Marko snorted at that, but his smile was too big to hide. Sasha just shook her head in disbelief as the other boy boldly got up from his seat and headed onto his mission… saying he'd be right back.

"Whatever; curfew's at twelve," Sasha murmured dryly, snatching Marko's menu for a quick change of interest.

By the time he'd made it back to the entrance for the bar, the boy felt like the noise would drive him nuts to go through again. He found a small booth near the front windows where he recognized the girl's familiar mustard-yellow tank top, sitting casually with a handful of other girls. He fidgeted a little from the crowd, wondering if he'd be labeled as a creeper just by interrupting them… but just then, a few girls waiting in line outside the bar started to point him out through the windowsill. It was when the boy heard his own name amongst the chatter and screeches and 'oh my god's he realized just what was going on… and he quickly tried to sink back into the crowd.

He didn't notice how the girl had looked up from that little ruckus outside the window, as well.

The boy sunk further into the crowd, to hide from these excited little groupies now waiting in line outside to meet one of those dancers from that show on TV.

_Great, _he thought, _Just when I wanted to keep a low profile. _

He debated whether or not to just hurry back to Sasha and Marko and tell them to make a run for it before the autographs would take over their night off… but then, as he turned a corner… he saw her.

She was waiting in line to use the girls' restroom, apparently.

Her smile showed up again, and the boy knew. He could see the restroom was just a scapegoat.

The boy took a breath, telling himself to move forward as the girl met his eyes. Her calm expression told him that yes… she knew exactly who he was… and no, she wasn't going to bombard him with questions.

He let his feet take him where he needed to go, and whatever words he'd planned to say were lost as he came face-to-face with those sweet chocolate-brown eyes.

The loud crowd and that Foo Fighters song playing in the background wasn't helping either, and the boy did the best he could to outdo the noise.

"SORRY I ALMOST SPILLED THOSE DRINKS ON YOU!"

He felt like an idiot, having to practically shout over the music, but the girl laughed… her hands hidden beneath her skinny-jean pockets. She wasn't skinny, as the boy noticed, and he took the care of studying just how much shorter she was than he. A half-a-foot, maybe?

"IT'S OKAY!" the girl responded just as loudly.

She'd said something else, but the boy could only catch part of it from the noisy crowd.

"WHAT?"

"I SAID YOU'RE A GREAT DANCER!"

The boy already felt himself blushing. "OH, THANK YOU!" he said, trying to shrug the modesty on his shoulders.

She then gave a small gesture with her frame, directing him towards the back door of the bar where the veranda was situated. It was like an invitation to talk in a less noisy, less intimidating place without exchanging a single word.

With the groupies probably searching the bar for him at this point, the boy nodded for 'yes' and the girl led the way.

He was silently admiring her cute pixie hair as they walked, and he thought it complemented her petite figure and her dark crème skin tone. Was it strange to study her this much? He wanted to stop before his mind wouldn't catch the next thing she would say.

The veranda, thankfully, wasn't as cramped as the inside, and the two of them found a small space near a railing, just enough room to stand and talk.

_Oh God,_ he wondered, _what would she want to talk about? Dancing? Politics? The Economy?_

He laughed at himself, hoping that all those awkward college days had taught him something.

She spoke first.

"Is it weird for you now?" her eyebrows rose curiously, "To go out like this?"

The boy's stomach felt less heavy now, and he smiled.

"A little," he leaned against the railing and placed his hands in his pockets for comfort. "I mean, not everybody knows about the show… but I get the occasional picture request, yeah. Marko gets a ton."

She laughed, and the boy felt so accomplished that he could do that.

"I have to admit," the girl suddenly took an interest in her shoes, "he was my boy-crush this season. But you definitely got away with the crowd!"

He snickered, nodding fully in agreement. "We kinda helped each other out for the fans… Bromance, you know?"

She looked back up at him, grinning, "yeah, I picked up on that after a while."

They laughed and took some time to just listen to the music and people-watch outside the bar. She asked him about the whole experience. As he began to talk about the dancing and the auditioning process for the show, she listened… but the girl soon began to admire the way he spoke. How he laughed over his own sarcasm.

The way his dark eyes would remain hidden, even as he raised a brow, like they kept a secret only for those who knew him well.

"How do you explain," she started to smile again, "how you still can't ride a bike… but it seems like you were born to walk with your hands?"

The boy laughed at that, albeit nervously. "You know, I just never got around to learning it! It never sparked my interest, I guess. Dancing just came naturally."

He shrugged, losing his slouch on the railing as he turned to face her more properly.

This conversation felt like it was slowly turning into one of those FOX interviews, but the boy knew she meant well, and he tried wear off that tension just by looking at her eyes.

"Well, I can't even do a cartwheel, so props to you!" was the next thing she said with a shrug. It made the boy grin out of the awkwardness.

"Do you dance?" he asked her, studying the sudden bashfulness to her face.

"I grew up dancing with my family; lots of salsa, merengue," she finally began to say. "It's the sort of thing where you can play a song, and my body just… _moves_."

The boy nodded. "That's exactly me."

"May I just say that you had some of the most creative solos?" She smiled.

He laughed, looking out over the railing to watch people pass by. "I always feel like a song is expressing some kind of fun… and I just want people to feel that fun."

The boy waited for her to say something back to him, but there was a slight pause. He turned back to see her, and he noticed that her eyes had narrowed a bit… as if trying to see through something.

"Do you ever dance for yourself, though?"

He blinked, not exactly expecting that. "What do you mean?"

"I guess what I'm saying is… do you dance that way because it's what people want out of you, or is it really what you're feeling from the music?"

There was a long pause, while the boy just looked at the girl questionably… wondering if she had really meant to pry on his dancing style like that. He didn't speak, which made the girl feel like she crossed a line. She moved a bit further from the railing, wondering if this conversation had come to an end as the boy continued stay quiet. The girl was about to wish him good luck when he finally responded.

"There's an entertainment aspect to it, I guess, but that's who I am. I dance because I want people to feel that same way I get whenever I do a new trick or something. It's like… if I've made one kid smile or jump out their seat in awe about something that simple or that cool, then I've done my job. Though… I guess I wouldn't call it a job, because it's what I love to do."

He grinned at her. The girl met his dark eyes again, this time feeling more than welcome to ask him anything. While she took his response into consideration, wondering how many people knew about this sort of sincerity about him… the boy asked her a question.

"What do you love to do?"

That took the girl with just as much surprise, he noticed, but by her fading smile and the slight weariness of her features… he also felt like he had just interrogated someone. Her eyes wandered off.

"Um… well I'm still trying to figure that out, actually," her voice began.

She fished for the best words - words deep from her soul, it seemed like – to explain to him why it was so difficult for her to define something she loved. Any other person would have led her to a simple, shorter answer, but for some odd reason… she told herself to go further this time. The boy found himself in the middle of this girl's quiet but emotional undertaking, and all he could do is see. Not observe, but see. And when she found herself ready to speak, he listened.

"I always had this talent for drawing, based on what other people would tell me. I liked drawing and painting whenever I was bored, but didn't really see a career for it. And then I started looking at artists from my favorite animated films– Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, you know? – and I figured I could go into animation and storyboarding , just draw for a living and love it… but I don't know. I took some art classes for a Master of Fine Arts degree in animation, and it felt like I had no idea what I was getting into."

The girl forced a grin to keep her voice from quivering.

"In the end, I felt like I'd wasted a year and a lot of money on something I wasn't really that prepared for, and I'm too old to start over."

The boy raised a brow. "But… you don't look that old."

She laughed nervously, "Well, too old to compete with all those high school art prodigies, anyway."

"Is that what you _want _to think?" he asked then.

"No, but it's how the world is making me think," the girl said to him a slightly matter-of-fact way. "Student loans to pay, my parents pushing me to have a career, the job market plummeting for artists as it is… I can't afford to figure myself out anymore. I gotta find something I'm already familiar with and will keep me stable."

The boy let his eyes gaze towards the girl's chocolate-brown, seeing how there was an edge of anger to everything she spoke about. He wanted to say some kind of reassurance, but she beat him to it.

"You know, I'd give anything to have what you have."

He wondered. "Luck?"

"Motivation," she corrected, with the smile that the boy had practically forgotten about. "You bring your own style as artist when you dance, and you don't spend time wondering how others feel about it. You're here because you haven't doubted yourself… and you never let anybody stop you."

The boy's eyes were hidden, still, but the girl could almost note a glimmer in them. Funny, to think that he started out this whole audition process as something fun – something he had no problem losing, that he could simply toss by the waste-side if things didn't turn out so great. But with every week that passed in the show… those nights he was _sure_ he would be the one to get eliminated, and wasn't… he didn't think there was a way to express to the girl standing in front of him just now, the _thrill_ of being in that place.

"Let me ask you something," the boy whispered, then, as if the secret of the universe were melting through the pores of his skin.

Her eyes remained glued to him, curiously.

"Is there anything you would choose to do over eating?"

"Sorry?"

"Such as, you do this particular thing… and… you suddenly forget that you had to eat at some point, like the time just flew by for no apparent reason and your stomach begins to grumble?"

"W-what?" The girl just looked at him strangely, trying very hard not to laugh or blush.

"_Dancing!_" He exclaimed, fighting a blush himself. "For me, it's dancing."

And for one reason or another, that broke the ice. They laughed, openly. Honestly. It came as a very strange moment for the two of them, but their blushing faces laughed it off, dismissing any exchange of awkwardness that had occurred between them. The boy looked at her one more time, not hesitating to smile as she hid her red face in embarrassment.

"What I was saying, was…" the boy tried to bring the subject back again, "when I dance, I sometimes forget to _eat_ I love it so much. I don't think about it, I just do it. I feel like I'm home whenever I hear a song and it makes me want to move."

The girl brought her hand back to the railing to show her face, nodding in understanding. That smirk he had teasingly made didn't exactly help her breathe any easier, so the boy asked her again.

"So what do you do that makes you feel that way?"

She took a few seconds to herself and just laid back against the railing, admiring the boy's full attention as he waited for her to speak. It's funny, how she didn't feel the slightest amount of pressure from him, either. Like all the time and space in the world was being given to her.

"Writing."

Her voice came out softly and sincerely by that one word.

"I think, when all is said and done, writing is the only thing I have ever done for myself. I could spend hours and hours imagining some world, jotting down characters and scenarios… anything."

"Yeah?" the boy glanced at the sweet smile the girl was beginning to make. "Well, there you go. Use that as your center to your life. I'm not saying you should go make a living out of it, but just have that as the source of goodness… something you can go home to when everything else doesn't seem so hot. That's what I'm doing with dance."

She finally gazed back at him again, and the light brown of her eyes had a sense of glimmer to them again. Something hopeful, astounding, and pure.

"And if you want, you can send me your stuff, because you know… I know people in Hollywood."

The girl laughed again and playfully punched the boy on the arm, neither of them realizing that it was the first physical contact they had had. It was when the boy heard his cell phone buzz from his back pocket that he realized just how much time they had spent together in that veranda… and that Sasha was going to kill him if he showed to the hotel late again, according to her text.

"Hey, you wouldn't want to take a walk around here and just talk some more, would you?" the girl boldly asked as he was reading his text.

"Shoot," he quickly glanced up at the girl again, "Listen, this is gonna sound really bad, but I can't. Curfew soon."

"Oh, right. Dance tour…" she laughed, wondering why in the world it hadn't crossed her mind. "Cool. But could you promise me something?"

The boy had just put his phone back into his pocket, seeing the sincerity of her eyes as she spoke.

"If this is your dream, right now… what you're doing… make sure that you do it for yourself as much as you do it for the people. Don't lose yourself in it, okay?"

The boy took that into consideration, smiling one of those rare-dimpled smiles as he extended a hand to her and said "Deal."

She grinned and received the hand openly and shook it once. The second physical contact they had just passed by without a moment's thought.

But it was the third, actually, that they would remember for a long long time… where the girl brought herself closer, the boy opened his arms, and the two of them shared a very generous hug. It was only for a few seconds, but they passed by as slowly as hours by the way they held each other close, valuing the words and the teasing and just the existence of their brief encounter. The girl's insides were jumping from excitement, the feeling of actually _meeting _this guy falling somewhere between surreal and unreal. The boy, however, had never felt more real all summer.

"In any case," the girl spoke as they parted, "I think you dance one mean Viennese Waltz."

He snickered at that, looking at the ground bashfully and scratching his faux hawk for a second.

"Best of luck to you tomorrow, okay?" she said.

"Yeah, I hope we run into each other again soon," he said to her in a confident way.

She smiled humbly, "I hope so too."

With one final wave, she made her way out of the veranda and back to her friends… while the boy just looked out the railing to breath in a new moment, before taking his leave out of the bar.

It wasn't until he was walking finally towards the entrance of the hotel… that he realized he had never gotten the girl's name! The color in his cheeks seemed to flush for a second, until he thought about it more thoroughly, and discovered that this may have been the first time in a long time where he had actually talked to a girl.

Talked to her, but not pursued her.

Moments of their conversation ran through his mind, and he realized that what he learned about her was all he really needed to know. He didn't need proof of a name or contact information to see if she would someday want to cross paths with him again. There was always a way, he thought, whether it would be mentioning her words of wisdom on live TV at some point… or whether she would talk to him on his next Twitter feed… the boy knew that if the feeling was mutual, they would meet again.


End file.
